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Vulnerability focus |
Food system concern |
Evaluation criteria |
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What are the key functions of the system? |
Four major activities: production, processing, distribution, and
consumption |
The three outcome categories should illustrate whether food system activities are functioning properly |
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Three categories of outcomes: food security, social welfare, and environment |
The outcomes are prioritized by social values or policy goals, and the prioritization is scale dependent |
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What is potentially vulnerable? |
Consumers can be food insecure |
Food insecurity arises because of a loss of availability, a loss of access, or a lack of proper use |
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The environment can be degraded |
Biodiversity loss, nutrient cycle alteration, water pollution, etc. |
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The social welfare of both consumers and agents in the food chain can be diminished |
Income loss, increased inequity, increased migration, etc. |
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Food system activities can be disrupted |
The food system outcomes should, but may not, indicate this because of masking or substitutions among activities |
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How is a global environmental change shock or signal transmitted?
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Shocks can be transmitted over long or short distances and via few or many processes, which may magnify or diminish their impact. They can be ignored or masked. Cross-scale interactions may be particularly dangerous because they can complicate outcomes |
An increase or decrease in system vulnerability as a result of the shock.
One or more outcomes may indicate this vulnerability. Possibly no outcomes will
indicate any vulnerability. |
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What gives the system adaptive capacity? |
Specific social, economic, institutional, and ecological components of the
system, i.e., the actors and their resources, as well as their relationship to
one another within the system |
Adaptive capacity is the major projection against vulnerability |
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Can thresholds of vulnerability be defined? |
Food security outcomes are often measured against standardized criteria.
The same is attempted for many ecosystem criteria |
A defined limit is important to motivate policy responses |
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Which processes are fast? Which are slow? |
Fast disturbances attract attention, but the slowly changing variables are
more important |
Resilience usually comes from slowly changing variables, but rapid changes
can trigger temporary vulnerability. This is scale dependent |
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Who are the winners and losers? |
Not all food system components will necessarily improve together |
This will depend upon social and political priorities |